Strauss-Kahn sex scandal presented on Paris stage

PARIS -- Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's stunning fall from grace will be presented on a Paris stage this week in a play focusing on his sex scandals.

“L'Affaire” “retraces the steps of a man who, at any cost, follows his desires to the end,” the play's authors Jean-Louis Bauer and Philippe Adrien wrote on the theater's website.

“In the beginning there is a dream — to climb to the highest office. In the end, there is nothing but the horror of the fall, a nightmare,” they wrote of the show that plays from Thursday to Sunday at the Theatre de la Tempete.

The play focuses in part on Strauss-Kahn's relationship with his journalist wife Anne Sinclair, who has stood by him through his scandals.

U.S. director Abel Ferrara said this year that he plans to film a Strauss-Kahn movie, featuring Gerard Depardieu as the fallen International Monetary Fund boss and Isabelle Adjani as his loyal wife.

A one-time front-runner for the French presidency, Strauss-Kahn's career collapsed after his arrest last year on accusations he sexually assaulted a New York hotel maid.

The charges were eventually dropped but Strauss-Kahn, 63, has since faced a series of criminal and civil actions in connection with alleged sex crimes.

The hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, has launched a civil suit against Strauss-Kahn in New York seeking unspecified damages, while he has in turn filed a US$1 million countersuit for malicious prosecution and defamation.

In France, Strauss-Kahn, two businessmen and a police chief were in March charged with “aggravated pimping in an organized gang” for allegedly organizing a prostitution ring for orgies in France, the United States and elsewhere.

French prosecutors have also opened a preliminary investigation into accusations he took part in a gang rape in the United States.